by Revolution
data on a United States civil rights fighter? Well, they most
certainly did. And this should be enough to awaken many
people to the fact that the Justice Department of the United
States is itself contaminated by racist influences.
If I had not been able to escape from the United States
I would never have gotten to a trial, let alone a fair trial.
The Other Defendants
Mrs. Stegall reported that my home was an "armed
camp." But the raid on my house had failed to produce any
trace of these arms or ammunition. So the police used my
disappearance as an excuse to raid through the rest of the
community; tearing up homes, terrorizing a lot of the people
who weren't even in the defense guard, grilling in all-night
sessions persons known to be my associates, and confiscating the weapons they found-weapons we possessed legally.
The Freedom Riders who were out of jail said that although I was gone they were going to carry on the struggle; they would carry on this fight that we had started. They
made this statement to The New York Post and to The New
56
THE MONROE CASE: CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEGRO
York Times a day after I left. One of them was John Lowry, a
twenty-year-old white college student from New York. Two
days after he declared that the struggle would be continued
he was arrested and charged with complicity. Richard
Crowder, a local nineteen-year-old youth who had been
elected chairman of the Monroe Non-Violent Action Committee, was also indicted along with seventeen-year-old Harold Reape. These boys had participated in the original picket
line and in the sit-in demonstration and they had shown
leadership ability in this struggle. Therefore they were indicted for complicity. Mae Mallory, who left North Carolina after the rioting started, was also charged with complicity,
but no immediate attempt was made to apprehend her.
In addition, Albert Rorie (seventeen years old) and Jimmie Covington (fifteen years old), two other local Negro youth who had participated in all of these struggles, were
each charged and indicted with having shot a policeman
apiece, although the City of Monroe never could produce
more than one wounded policeman. Jimmie Covington was
committed to reform school. Albert Rorie was given five
years in prison. This case is pending on appeal to the state
Supreme Court.
Richard Griswold of Brooklyn, New York, another white
Freedom Rider arrested during the rioting on the 2 7th, was
beaten almost to the point of death in the Union County jail
that day by another prisoner, a white criminal being held on
forgery and assault charges. Griswold's life was saved only
because another arrested Freedom Rider was led past the
cell in which Griswold was lying, blood-covered and semiconscious. The second Freedom Rider, Kenneth Shilman, started yelling at the top of his lungs, demanding that Griswold be removed from the cell before he was killed. The warden complied because he thought the white student would die and then there would really be trouble.
Starting the very next day, all the different city, county,
state, and Federal law-enforcement agencies began sending
each other telegrams about how law and order had been reestablished in Monroe. And the week following the riots each employee of the Sheriff's Department was awarded $ 100
57
NEGROES WITH GUNS
extra pay by the Board of County Commissioners. The bonus
was "compensation for special services rendered during the
'race emergencies' in Monroe."
Almost three weeks later The Committee to Aid The
Monroe Defendants (CAMD) received a handwritten, signed
confession from Howard Stack, the white prisoner who had
been Griswold's cellmate. Stack admitted that he had beaten
Griswold at the behest of the Monroe police who had prom-
Handwritten confession of Howard Stack that he beat up the
young Freedom Rider Griswold at the behest of Monroe police.
This confession was sent to the Department of Justice, which took
no action.
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THE MONROE CASE: CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEGRO
ised to drop the charges against him and release him
immediately in exchange for the beating. Stack sent this confession to the CAMD because two weeks after he was released he was again picked up and sentenced on the same charges that were supposedly dropped.
Conrad Lynn forwarded the original of the confession
to Attorney General Robert Kennedy and asked for an immediate investigation of the Monroe Police Department. The Justice Department never acknowledged receiving the confession. FBI agents did come around and secure depositions and even interviewed Stack. Meanwhile, Union County authorities quickly committed Stack to a mental institution and the Justice Department notified Lynn finally that their file
was closed.
The Spectre of the Russian Rifles
Soon various newspapers in the United States began to
report statements by local police officials that when they
raided our community they discovered and seized our secret armory: Russian rifles with sickle and hammer insignia.
They implied that these weapons were supplied by some
sort of ominous international Communist conspiracy. The
insinuation was that of a secret weapons cache shipped to
us directly by Moscow. This was a pure smear. They suppressed the information that many of our rifles were of various foreign makes. They failed to mention that we had British surplus rifles with the insignia of the Crown. Why
didn't they recognize that we were agents of the Queen, hoping to restore the monarchy in America? Nor did they mention our rifles of Italian manufacture. They failed to mention that we also had German rifles with Nazi insignia. These
were World War II weapons, Mausers. They didn't think it
important to mention that we had such weapons. Or possibly they approve of rifles with Nazi insignia. They also failed to mention that we had surplus rifles from the United States
Army, the M-I rifle with U.S. Army insignia. Why didn't they
try to involve us in a conspiracy with the U.S. Army?
59
NEGROES WITH GUNS
They mentioned only the rifles of Russian onglO in
order to smear our self-defense movement. It was a tactic to
arouse hysteria among the racists and to mislead the American people. It was an attempt to inject fake emotional issues of the Cold War into our fight for survival. It was an attempt
to make the American people think that the Monroe selfdefense movement was a grave threat to their security.
The plain fact is that these rifles can be bought in armynavy surplus stores and regular hardware stores throughout the United States. These rifles were purchased legally, including the Russian rifles with the hammer and sickle insignia. I received signed bills of sale with the numbers of these Russian rifles on them.
This was no special secret supply or hidden armory.
We had a rifle club with a charter from the National Rifle
Association since 1 957. We were authorized to have rifles.
We did target practice. There are three other gun clubs in
Monroe, three white gun clubs. The white people even have
two segregated professional rifle ranges. But not a single
newspaper mentioned any of these facts.
Newspapers like The New York Post started crying and
sobbing hysterically about Russian rifles being found, but
they failed to mention that these rifles were bought openly
in stores in the United States. These Russian rifles were not
automatic weapons. They were the bolt-action type used for
sport and marksmanship firing and had won five out of six
trials in the Olympics of 1 959. This rifle is called the 6.53 and
it is not even used in the Russian Army. The "Russian rifles"
smear was perpetrated by sensationalist journalists who
somehow didn't see anything at all sensational when policemen armed white thugs to attack non-violent students in Monroe.
I have a picture taken from a recent issue of the Toronto
Star of members of the so-called U.S. Minute Men, the fascistic organization that is in fellowship with the John Birch Society. The photograph shows the Minute Men in training in the state of Illinois. Not the state of Mississippi, not the state
of Alabama or South Carolina, but the state of Illinois. These
people are equipped with machine guns and automatic ri-
60
THE MONROE CASE: CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEGRO
fles, including the Johnson automatic rifle, and they are firing U.S. Army 6.S-mm. mortars. They are firing these mortars on prepared ranges and firing live ammunition. Where did
they get these mortars? Where did they get this ammunition? No surplus stores in the United States sell mortars or live shells. Where did they get their machine guns and automatic rifles, many models of which still are in use by the United States Armed Forces? Unlike our weapons, automatic
rifles and machine guns may not be owned by civilians. This
is specified by Federal law.
These men are wearing standard steel helmets and are
dressed in surplus uniforms of the U.S. Army. The only difference is that they have their own Minute Men insignia. These men have raised and mobilized their own private army.
Some of the 5,000 men recruited in Monroe to attack the
Freedom Riders were components of this fascistic Minute
Men organization.
Nobody was upset about this. None of these pioussounding newspapers, so interested in the welfare and the security of the American people, breathed a word about Minute Men being brought into Monroe. These Minute Men have been arming and training with heavy weapons in the field.
What is the reason for this? Why has this been tolerated in
the United States? The Minute Men say that they are mobilizing to fight Communism or possible invasion of the United States by the Communists. Wouldn't an American be naive
indeed to believe that if the United States Marine Corps, the
Infantry, the Navy, and the Air Force couldn't stop some sort
of invasion, how in the hell could a few old women in tennis
shoes from the John Birch Society and their corps of Minute
Men stop them?
Anyone who can think logically can see that the racist
Minute Men are being armed and prepared for pogroms.
They are becoming a fascist vanguard that will some day be
turned loose on all Afro-Americans and white Americans
who get out of line. And to get out of line means to petition
militantly for Constitutional rights. These Minute Men types
will be the people who do the dirty work. Just as there were
special units to man the gas furnaces for the Jewish people
6 1
NEGROES WITH GUNS
in Nazi Germany, so "special units" will develop to handle
"trouble-makers" in a fascist America. This must be done
outside of the jurisdiction of the armed forces because the
U.S. Armed Services are integrated. But the Minute Men organizations are not integrated. It will be like the French Army and the O.A.S. in Algeria. They will look the other way, like
the Wehrmacht and the S.S. corps in Hitler's time. The
Armed Services of the United States, the police officials, the
Justice Department will look the other way and say, "We're
sorry, but we can't catch these people. We're sorry, but
we've done everything we can do to prevent violence." The
Minute Men have pure, 100 per cent, all-American weapons
and the newspapers have barely found cause to denounce
their activities.
But when the Negroes of Monroe, outnumbered and
outarmed, gallantly rose to defend their homes, their families, and their persons, their efforts at self-defense were scorned by the press and they were smeared with the insinuation that their weapons were furnished by some insidious Communist conspiracy.
All the American people, not just Afro-Americans, must
realize that if we had not been armed in this city of Monroe,
Union County, North Carolina last August 27, there would
have been mass bloodshed. There is only one reason why
the racist mob lost its nerve in their projected attack on the
Negro community. Knowing as they did that we were well
armed, they found it impossible to stomach the thought of
violence.
These are people who would like to do violence to others but want to have immunity from violence themselves.
They are the people who just love it when pacifist Negroes
turn the other cheek.
Our preparations and constant armed vigilance to protect our homes from attack were completely divorced from the campaign of the Freedom Riders and our local students
who were picketing and demonstrating on a non-violent
basis. We armed ourselves solely to defend ourselves. And if
we hadn't been armed, we would have been the victims of
one of the first modern pogroms against the Afro-American.
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THE MONROE CASE: CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE NEGRO
Let the newspapers wail and bemoan about our rifles with
Communist insignia. I don't care what kind of insignias the
rifles had on them. They were a godsend to us that Sunday,
August 27, 1 96 1 .
Canada-Then Cuba
When I realized that this was no longer a local matter
and that the U.S. Government had entered into the picture
and was just as determined to destroy me as the Ku Klux
Klan, I decided that I had to leave New York and that the best
place to go would be Canada.
I felt that the Canadian people would be sympathetic. I
also remembered that Canada had been a place of refuge for
escaped Negroes using the underground railway during the
time of slavery in the United States. So I made my way on to
Canada with my wife Mabel. I felt secure in Canada. For a few
days I lived a normal life. I went around town shoppingwindow shopping. I attended an air show and went to the park and to the beaches. It seemed to me that I was quite
secure. I felt that there was a possibility that I would be able
to remain in Canada since charges against me were really
trumped up.
One morning, to my surprise, there was a huge picture
of me on the front page of a Canadian newspaper. The story
that went with the photo said that I was a vicious kidnapper
and that the Justice Department of the United States had
appealed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to apprehend me. It referred to me as a laborer and freight handler.
It didn't mention that I was president of the Union County
branch of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People. Nor did it mention that I had written, edited,
and published a newsletter.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police initiated a search
that was just as vicious and carried out jus
t as energetically
as the FBI search. Since there were many Canadians who
realized what the race situation was in the United States and
who sympathized with me, the Royal Canadian Mounted Po-
63
NEGROES WITH GUNS
lice started searching homes. They even searched a church
in Toronto (and questioned the minister) where I had appeared while on a speaking tour the previous summer. I decided that Canada would be no safer than the United States.
I had made plans with sympathetic Canadians to fight extradition proceedings if I was apprehended in Canada. They were prepared to show that the authorities were trying to
return me to the violence, brutality, and racial oppression of
the South, and they had hired lawyers for me in Canada who
were ready to take immediate legal action in the event of my
arrest. But luckily I was able to leave Canada.
When I realized that I would not be safe in Canada, I
remembered my two trips to Cuba. I could think of no other
place in the Western Hemisphere where a Negro would be
treated as a human being, where the race problem would be
understood, and where people would not look upon me as a
criminal but as a victim of a trumped-Up charge-a charge
designed to crush the militant leaders who were beginning
to form a new movement, a new militant movement designed
for the total liberation of the Afro-Americans.
Since all the eastern coast of Canada was being
watched by the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
I traveled across Canada to the west coast, re-entered the
United States and made my way into Mexico and from there
to Cuba. That was why I came to Cuba-because I had no
alternative.
The Complicity of the Ohio Governor
Shortly after Cuba announced that she had granted me
political asylum, Mrs. Mae Mallory was arrested by agents of
the FBI in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had gone for asylum.
The state of North Carolina immediately requested that she
be extradited back to Union County to stand trial.
If Mrs. Mallory is extradited, she will join Lowry, Reape,
and Crowder and be tried on a yet undetermined date in a
North Carolina court, where there is no possible chance of
their obtaining justice, especially under the conditions that
